Georgia's CO2 emissions efforts need more sunshine, expert says
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World leaders have met for the past week in Dubai for COP28, the international climate change summit to broker agreements on lowering global-warming emissions.
- While Georgia recently made progress in its emissions reductions, its old playbook will only go so far, a Georgia Tech climate research tells Axios.
Driving the news: U.S. Energy Information Administration data show Georgia's carbon emissions dropped 14% between 2016 and 2021.
- But the agency found overall CO2 levels in the state increased 69% from 1970 to 2021 across all sectors — homes, businesses and transportation.
Why it matters: The state is seeing the impacts of climate change in many ways, from higher temperatures in Atlanta and north Georgia to rising sea levels on the coast.
State of play: Georgia is working on its first-ever climate plan thanks to a federal grant, the AJC reported in July. The Atlanta Regional Commission is also creating an emissions-reduction roadmap for the metro area.
- City Hall is 13% of the way toward its goal of running all of Atlanta on clean energy by 2035.
Flashback: In May, a collaboration between Georgia Tech and other universities called Drawdown Georgia calculated that per person greenhouse gas emissions dropped 8% from 2017 to 2021.
What they're saying: William Drummond, a Georgia Tech professor who created Drawdown's emissions tracker, tells Axios that the state's reductions since 2005 came largely from Georgia Power swapping out carbon-spewing coal plants with natural gas.
- Those reductions "can only run for so long, until there's little or no coal left to be substituted," he says.
What we're watching: Drummond says the state could make "dramatic progress toward net-zero by doing everything possible to maximize our solar resources" while reducing reliance on fossil fuels for electricity.
Possible future strategies he cited:
- Building more solar farms
- Removing transmission bottlenecks to deliver solar energy from South Georgia
- Making it easier and more cost-efficient for people to use solar power in their homes and communities
- Capping landfills and burning off their methane to generate electricity
- Boosting energy efficiency in buildings by weatherizing and encouraging more efficient heating and power systems
Reality check: Transportation remains Georgia's largest source of emissions.
- Between 2017 and 2021, emissions from cars, pick-up trucks and SUVs did not change at all, Marilyn Brown, professor of sustainable systems at Georgia Tech, told Axios in a prior interview.
Go deeper with the AJC: What to expect from the state's climate plan